Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edsons Wit - Essay Example

VIVIAN BEARING Vivian bearing is the main character in Wit, Margaret Edson’s play. It is a short drama which involves her dealing with challenges and issues of life in an uncommon way. She struggles with stage-four ovarian cancer and unlike other patients she remains tough and witty. She is a professor who is tough and she does not care about the students and their struggles. She only has a passion for seventeenth century poetry especially the complex sonnets of Donne john. At the beginning of the play it is evident that she dedicated her life to Holy Sonnets and she spent decades exploring poetic wit and mystery of each line.

It is her academic pursuits and her strong passion for poetry that shape her personality (Edson, 2000). She was insensitive and cold hearted. She did not care about her student’s welfare and she said it was none of her business. She told one of her students, Vivian that she goes to class prepared or she excuses herself from the class, department and university. She also said that she won’t care if she left the school. When a student tried to request for extension of the deadline of assignment hand in because of the death of her grandmother she dismissed her without even giving it a thought.

She embarrassed the weak performing students in class instead of encouraging them to work hard. She said it was not her business if any of her students failed. This clearly shows how cold hearted she was. Whenever students went to her with personal problems she dismissed them saying she had no time for other peoples problem. Her callousness is depicted when she embarrassed weak students instead of helping them (Mary, 2009). She was also brilliant and intelligent. She recalled how she used to be among the top performers in school.

The fact that she is a professor clearly shows that she is smart and brilliant. She could interpret poems word by word and she also had her own. She intimidated her students with cold calculated brilliance. She had mastered poetry like the palm of her hands and she was good at it. Her brilliance is also showed by the way she teaches, she was well informed of the subjects she taught. She had high expertise in poetry and she taught it with ease. She accepted her illness in an intellectual level until she was in extreme pain.

She viewed the situation as a learning experience and she hides behind her wit in the play. She equated her intellectual curiosity to emotional toughness and she says that the only thing she feels comfortable wrapping her head around is literary text that is challenging. Being a professor she appreciated the thirst for knowledge (Edson, 2000). She was strong hearted and determined. Vivian believed the world was no place for emotional people. She tells the audience that she knows for a fact that she is tough.

She also says that she is a demanding and an uncompromising professor. She says no one should ever turn away from challenges. She believed the bad performing students were afraid of academic challenges and they had no business being in school. She likes challenging literary texts and she claims they make her feel comfortable. Even with the cancer she remained strong and she did not allow emotions and negative feeling invade her mind. She underwent all the eight cycles of chemotherapy without having second thoughts.

She viewed her cancer as an experimental learning experience and not as a cause of death. Basing on Donne poem she believes she cannot die. She was unwilling to accept the possibility of death or weakness (Edson, 2000). Despite Bearing being arrogant and tough at the beginning it is obvious she has a soft and understanding in the inside. When she feels intense pain getting the reality that she will die, she quits on maintaining her front. She says that she thought being smart would make her control emotions but she was wrong.

She discovered she could not fight fate with being smart. She regretted how bad she treated her students and she says she wished she had treated them with humanity. The flash backs of her arrogant statements to students haunt her and this clearly shows that she is kind in the inside. It disturbs her that she was acting in an inhuman way and she wishes she had been kind when she had the chance (Anne, 2008). She was uncompromising and arrogant. She did not want to face the reality that cancer was going to kill her.

She thought she could use her smartness to control her emotions. She knew she was going to lose her battle with cancer. She did not like showing emotions and she was cold hearted to her students. She thought she could run away from the reality by being arrogant and inhuman. She did not want to listen to the students’ problems as it would turn on her emotions (Edson, 2000). Works Cited Edson, Margaret. Wit. Atlanta: Nick Hern Books, 2000. Hahl, Victoria Anne. Making Victim: Establishing a Framework for Analyzing Victimization in 20th Century American Theatre.

Florida: ProQuest, 2008. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature. Chicago: Infobase Publishing, 2009.